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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 91 records · Page 5
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Chasing Fast Dynamos in the Plasma Lab

Self-generating magnetic field research is performed through the operation of the newly built Madison Plasma Dynamo Experiment (MPDX). MPDX is designed to explore a hitherto unexplored part of parameter space where dynamos operate in nature. Dynamos are systems which continuously transform kinetic energy from plasma flow into magnetic energy. Before this project, MPDX had demonstrated the ability to create steady-state, unmagnetized high conductivity, low viscosity plasmas in the lab and shown that sheared flows can be driven from the plasma boundary using an electrostatic stirring technique; the resulting Reynolds numbers and Alfvén Mach numbers easily match those required for our dynamo scenarios. The research activities included: (1) systematic undertaking of a set of plasma hydrodynamics experiments, exploring several different flow geometries, measuring plasma viscosity, how toroidal and poloidal flows self-consistently interact, observing the transition to turbulence and experimentally understanding the boundary conditions (on flow and magnetic field) that make this system unique, (2) searching for slow, laminar dynamos, and (3) searching for fast, turbulent dynamos. Discovering the conditions under which dynamos self-generate magnetic fields and then understanding how this field changes plasma dynamics is one of the most compelling questions in all of plasma astrophysics.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Within‐field soil moisture variability and time‐invariant spatial structures of agricultural fields in the US Midwest

Abstract Understanding soil moisture variability and estimating high‐resolution soil moisture at subfield to field scales is critical for agricultural research and applications. However, systematic investigation of subfield scale soil moisture variability over cropland is still lacking from both measurement and satellite remote sensing. In this study, we aim to investigate (1) the characteristics of within‐field soil moisture distribution over typical cropland in the US Midwest and (2) the capabilities of satellite remote sensing in capturing the spatiotemporal variabilities of soil moisture at subfield scale. Specifically, we conducted soil moisture field experiments in three typical commercial agricultural fields (∼85 acres per field) in central Illinois, representing typical commercial farmlands in the US Midwest, and compared the soil moisture measurements with satellite remote sensing data from optical and active microwave sensors. In each field, dense soil moisture samples (spaced at 50–60 m) were obtained for two dry down events in May and July 2021, and multiple long‐term soil moisture stations were installed. We found prominent time‐invariant spatial structures of soil moisture at within‐field scales both during the dry down period and over longer time scales, and the stability is minimally affected by plant water use during the growing season. Comparing the field campaign measurements with satellite remote sensing data, we found that surface reflectance of shortwave infrared bands, such as SWIR1 (1610 nm) from Sentinel‐2, can capture relative surface soil moisture patterns at within‐field scales, but their relationships with soil moisture are field specific. These findings and the improved understanding of within‐field soil moisture dynamics could potentially help future research on high‐resolution soil moisture estimation with multi‐source remote sensing data.

Yang, Yi↗
DOE OSTI2024

New constraints on ultraheavy dark matter from the LZ experiment

Searches for dark matter with liquid xenon time projection chamber experiments have traditionally focused on the region of the parameter space that is characteristic of weakly interacting massive particles, ranging from a few GeV / c 2 to a few TeV / c 2 . Models of dark matter with a mass much heavier than this are well motivated by early production mechanisms different from the standard thermal freeze-out, but they have generally been less explored experimentally. In this work, we present a reanalysis of the first science run of the LZ experiment, with an exposure of 0.9 tonne × yr , to search for ultraheavy particle dark matter. The signal topology consists of multiple energy deposits in the active region of the detector forming a straight line, from which the velocity of the incoming particle can be reconstructed on an event-by-event basis. Zero events with this topology were observed after applying the data selection calibrated on a simulated sample of signal-like events. New experimental constraints are derived, which rule out previously unexplored regions of the dark matter parameter space of spin-independent interactions beyond a mass of 10 17 GeV / c 2 . Published by the American Physical Society 2024

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Magneto-structural and induction heating properties of MFe2O4 (M?=?Co, Mn, Zn) MNPs for magnetic particle hyperthermia application

The thermal decomposition approach was used for the synthesis of MFe2O4 magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) by substituting M as Co, Mn, and Zn. The obtained MNPs were characterized for magneto-structural properties using X-Ray diffraction patterns, FTIR, Raman and Mossbauer spectroscopy techniques which confirm the formation of phase pure cubic spinel ferrite with space group Fd3m and five Raman active modes. The size, morphology, and compositional analysis was performed using HRTEM and EDX where the size of MNPs was found to be less than 10 nm that attains superparamagnetism. The magnetic hyperthermia performance of obtained MNPs was evaluated by induction heating experiments at magnetic field range 13.3 to 26.7 kAm-1. The specific absorption rate (SAR) and intrinsic loss power (ILP) values were determined at different magnetic fields within the human tolerable range and correlated with magneto-structural properties to evaluate its potential for possible magnetic particle hyperthermia therapy.

Magnetic nanoparticles, complex-decomposition, mag↗
DOE OSTI2022

A mass conservative, well balanced, tangency preserving and energy decaying method for the shallow water equations on a sphere

Here a fully discrete surface finite element method is proposed for solving the viscous shallow water equations in a bounded Lipschitz domain on the sphere based on a general triangular mesh. The method consists of a modified Crank–Nicolson method in time and a Galerkin surface finite element method in space for the fluid thickness H and the fluid velocity u. A finite element space tangential to the sphere at all finite element nodes is proposed to approximate the fluid velocity u. The proposed method has second-order accuracy in time and first-order accuracy in space, and preserves mass conservation, well balancedness, tangency of velocity to the sphere, and energy decay. Numerical experiments are presented to illustrate the accuracy of the proposed method and the preservation of the physical properties, including mass conservation, well balancedness, and energy decay. A numerical simulation of ocean mesoscale activity on a circular basin with a continental shelf is provided.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2024

Human-in-the-Loop: The Future of Machine Learning in Automated Electron Microscopy

Machine learning (ML) methods are progressively gaining acceptance in the electron microscopy community for de-noising, semantic segmentation, and dimensionality reduction of data post-acquisition. The introduction of the application programming interfaces (APIs) by major instrument manufacturers now allows the deployment of ML workflows in microscopes, not only for data analytics but also for real-time decision-making and feedback for microscope operation. However, the number of use cases for real-time ML remains remarkably small. Furthermore, we discuss some considerations in designing ML-based active experiments and pose that the likely strategy for the next several years will be human-in-the-loop automated experiments (hAE). In this paradigm, the ML learning agent directly controls beam position and image and spectroscopy acquisition functions, and a human operator monitors experiment progression in real and feature space of the system and tunes the policies of the ML agent to steer the experiment toward specific objectives.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2026

Synthetic modeling of soft x-ray emissivity for magnetic island analysis in LTX-β

We present a synthetic soft x-ray (SXR) forward-modeling framework that characterizes the emissivity structure of rotating magnetic islands in the Lithium Tokamak eXperiment-β across space and time. Magnetic islands associated with tearing modes produce modulations in line-integrated SXR brightness. Traditional tomographic methods struggle to resolve these structures in devices with limited sightlines, resulting in an under-determined inversion problem, or otherwise necessitate equilibrium reconstruction data, preventing their use in active control. Our approach removes this challenge by combining a fully three-dimensional ray-tracing model with a time-dependent emissivity prescription of a $m/n$ = 2/1 magnetic island. The model is validated through helical island geometry, rotation measured by magnetic diagnostics, and equilibrium constraints from PSI-Tri reconstructions. Synthetic brightness signals are generated for each photodiode sightline from a modeled emissivity profile and directly compared with experimental data from a tangential midplane SXR array. By fitting the synthetic diagnostic output to the observed brightness across time, we simultaneously infer key geometric parameters-such as island radial location, island width, and rotation frequency-without requiring full tomographic reconstruction, all with an average absolute deviation of less than 3%. This work demonstrates that forward modeling with a single tangential array can extract key island parameters in a spherical tokamak, providing a computationally efficient alternative to conventional SXR tomography and providing a pathway toward real-time magnetic-island characterization in future devices.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Far-forward neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider

We present a new calculation of the energy distribution of high-energy neutrinos from the decay of charm and bottom hadrons produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the kinematical region of very forward rapidities, heavy-flavor production and decay is a source of tau neutrinos that leads to thousands of charged-current tau neutrino events in a 1 m long, 1 m radius lead neutrino detector at a distance of 480 m from the interaction region. In our computation, next-to-leading order QCD radiative corrections are accounted for in the production cross-sections. Non-perturbative intrinsic-kT effects are approximated by a simple phenomenological model introducing a Gaussian kT-smearing of the parton distribution functions, which might also mimic perturbative effects due to multiple initial-state soft-gluon emissions. The transition from partonic to hadronic states is described by phenomenological fragmentation functions. To study the effect of various input parameters, theoretical predictions for D± s production are compared with LHCb data on double-differential cross-sections in transverse momentum and rapidity. The uncertainties related to the choice of the input parameter values, ultimately affecting the predictions of the tau neutrino event distributions, are discussed. We consider a 3+1 neutrino mixing scenario to illustrate the potential for a neutrino experiment to constrain the 3+1 parameter space using tau neutrinos and antineutrinos. We find large theoretical uncertainties in the predictions of the neutrino fluxes in the far-forward region. Untangling the effects of tau neutrino oscillations into sterile neutrinos and distinguishing a 3+1 scenario from the standard scenario with three active neutrino flavours, will be challenging due to the large theoretical uncertainties from QCD.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2021

Future projections in tropical cyclone activity over multiple CORDEX domains from RegCM4 CORDEX-CORE simulations

The characteristics of tropical cyclone (TC) activity over five TC basins lying within four Coordinated Regional Downscaling Experiment (CORDEX) domains are examined for present and future climate conditions using a new ensemble of simulations completed as part of the CORDEX-CORE initiative with the regional climate model RegCM4. The simulations are conducted at a 25 km horizontal grid spacing and are driven by three CMIP5 general circulation models (GCMs) under two Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP2.6 and RCP8.5). The RegCM4 captures most features of the observed TC climatology, except for the TC intensity, which is thus statistically adjusted using a bias correction procedure to account for the effect of the coarse model resolution. The RegCM4 exhibits an improved simulation of several TC statistics compared to the driving GCMs, over most basins analyzed. In future climate conditions we find significant increases in TC frequency over the North Indian Ocean, the Northwest Pacific and Eastern Pacific regions, which are consistent with an increase in mid-tropospheric relative humidity. The North Atlantic and Australasia regions show a decrease in TC frequency, mostly associated with an increase in wind shear. We also find a consistent increase in future storm rainfall rates associated with TCs and in the frequency of the most intense TCs over most domains. Finally, our study shows robust responses often, but not always, in line with previous studies, still implying the presence of significant uncertainties in the projection of TC characteristics, which need to be addressed using large ensembles of simulations with high-resolution models.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2025

Edge-localized mode mitigation enabled by active control of pedestal density gradient with new EAST tokamak divertor

Mitigation of large edge-localized modes (ELMs) has been achieved by actively reducing the pedestal density gradient with the EAST new right-angled lower divertor through changing the strike point position from the vertical target to the horizontal target. A series of dedicated experiments in the 2021–2024 EAST campaigns demonstrate that this ELM control solution is highly reproducible in a broad parameter space of edge safety factor q 95 = 4.7–7.1, heating power P total = 2.3–5 MW, and pedestal collisionality $ν_{e,ped}^{*}$ = 1–6, under both favorable and unfavorable magnetic configurations. Higher plasma density could facilitate the achievement of this ELM control solution. Statistical results indicate that the ELM mitigation effect can be observed at relatively larger Greenwald density fraction of f GW > 0.47. In addition, this ELM mitigation effect can be achieved with both lithium-coated and boronized metal walls. The pedestal density gradient is systematically lower in the horizontal target case than that of the vertical target case when the ELM mitigation effect can be observed. SOLPS-ITER simulation results indicate that the pedestal fueling from divertor recycling is significantly lower in the horizontal target case. This could contribute to the formation of a flattened pedestal density profile with small ELMs.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗
DOE OSTI2020

Far-forward neutrinos at the Large Hadron Collider

We present a new calculation of the energy distribution of high-energy neutrinos from the decay of charm and bottom hadrons produced at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). In the kinematical region of very forward rapidities, heavy-flavor production and decay is a source of tau neutrinos that leads to thousands of charged-current tau neutrino events in a 1 m long, 1 m radius lead neutrino detector at a distance of 480 m from the interaction region. In our computation, next-to-leading order QCD radiative corrections are accounted for in the production cross-sections. Non-perturbative intrinsic-k T effects are approximated by a simple phenomenological model introducing a Gaussian k T -smearing of the parton distribution functions, which might also mimic perturbative effects due to multiple initial-state soft-gluon emissions. The transition from partonic to hadronic states is described by phenomenological fragmentation functions. To study the effect of various input parameters, theoretical predictions for $D^{±}_s$ production are compared with LHCb data on double-differential cross-sections in transverse momentum and rapidity. The uncertainties related to the choice of the input parameter values, ultimately affecting the predictions of the tau neutrino event distributions, are discussed. We consider a 3+1 neutrino mixing scenario to illustrate the potential for a neutrino experiment to constrain the 3+1 parameter space using tau neutrinos and antineutrinos. We find large theoretical uncertainties in the predictions of the neutrino fluxes in the far-forward region. Untangling the effects of tau neutrino oscillations into sterile neutrinos and distinguishing a 3+1 scenario from the standard scenario with three active neutrino flavours, will be challenging due to the large theoretical uncertainties from QCD.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Spin Splitting Energy of Transition Metals: A New, More Affordable Wave Function Benchmark Method and Its Use to Test Density Functional Theory

Accurately predicting the spin splitting energy of chemical species is important for understanding their reactivity and magnetic properties, but it is very challenging, especially for molecules containing transition metals. One impediment to progress is the scarcity of accurate benchmark data. Here we report a set of calculations designed to yield reliable benchmarks for simple transition-metal complexes that can be used to test density functional methods that are affordable for large systems of more practical interest. Various wave function methods are tested against experiment for Fe 2+ , Fe 3+ , and Co 3+ , including CASSCF, CASPT2, CASPT3, MRCISD, MRCISD+Q, ACPF, AQCC, CCSD(T), and CASPT2/CCSD(T) and also a new method called CASPT2.5, which is performed by taking the average of the CASPT2 and CASPT3 energies. Furthermore, we find that MRCISD+Q, ACPF, and AQCC require smaller active spaces for good accuracy than are required by CASPT2 and CASPT3, and this aspect may be important for calculations on larger molecules; here we find that CASPT2.5 extrapolated to a complete basis set is the most suitable method—in terms of computational cost and in terms of accuracy on monatomic systems—and therefore we chose this method for molecular benchmarks. Then Kohn–Sham density functional calculations with 60 exchange-correlation functionals are tested for FeF 2 , FeCl 2 , and CoF 2 . We find that MN15-L, M06-SX, and revM06 have very good agreement with CASPT2.5 benchmarks in terms of both the spin splitting energy and the optimized geometry for each spin state. In addition, we recommend def2-TZVP as the most suitable basis set to perform density functional calculations for molecular spin splitting energies; extra polarization functions in the basis set do not help to increase the accuracy of the spin splitting energy in KS calculations.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2021

Random Close Packing as a Dynamical Phase Transition

Sphere packing is an ancient problem. The densest packing is known to be a face-centered cubic (FCC) crystal, with space-filling fraction Φ FCC = π / √ 18 ≈ 0.74 . The densest “random packing,” random close packing (RCP), is yet ill defined, although many experiments and simulations agree on a value Φ RCP ≈ 0.64 . We introduce a simple absorbing-state model, biased random organization (BRO), which exhibits a Manna class dynamical phase transition between absorbing and active states that has as its densest critical point Φ cmax ≈ 0.64 ≈ Φ RCP and, like other Manna class models, is hyperuniform at criticality. The configurations we obtain from BRO appear to be structurally identical to RCP configurations from other protocols. This leads us to conjecture that the highest-density absorbing state for an isotropic biased random organization model produces an ensemble of configurations that characterizes the state conventionally known as RCP.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
DOE OSTI2021

A fast multi-fidelity method with uncertainty quantification for complex data correlations: Application to vortex-induced vibrations of marine risers

Here we develop a fast multi-fidelity modeling method for very complex correlations between high- and low-fidelity data by working in modal space to extract the proper correlation function. We apply this method to infer the amplitude of motion of a flexible marine riser in cross-flow, subject to vortex-induced vibrations (VIV). VIV are driven by an absolute instability in the flow, which imposes a frequency (Strouhal) law that requires a matching with the impedance of the structure; this matching is easily achieved because of the rapid parametric variation of the added mass force. As a result, the wavenumber of the riser spatial response is within narrow bands of uncertainty. Hence, an error in wavenumber prediction can cause significant phase-related errors in the shape of the amplitude of response along the riser, rendering correlation between low- and high-fidelity data very complex. Working in modal space as outlined herein, dense data from low-fidelity data, provided by the semi-empirical computer code VIVA, can correlate in modal space with few high-fidelity data, obtained from experiments or fully-resolved CFD simulations, to correct both phase and amplitude and provide predictions that agree very well overall with the correct shape of the amplitude response. We also quantify the uncertainty in the prediction using Bayesian modeling and exploit this uncertainty to formulate an active learning strategy for the best possible location of the sensors providing the high fidelity measurements.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Machine Learning Algorithm Identifies an Antibiotic Vocabulary for Permeating Gram-Negative Bacteria

Drug discovery faces a crisis. The industry has used up the “obvious” space in which to find novel drugs for biomedical applications, and productivity is declining. One strategy to combat this is rational approaches to expand the search space without relying on chemical intuition, to avoid rediscovery of similar spaces. Here, we present proof of concept of an approach to rationally identify a “chemical vocabulary” related to a specific drug activity of interest without employing known rules. We focus on the pressing concern of multidrug resistance in Pseudomonas aeruginosa by searching for submolecules that promote compound entry into this bacterium. By synergizing theory, computation, and experiment, we validate our approach, explain the molecular mechanism behind identified fragments promoting compound entry, and select candidate compounds from an external library that display good permeation ability.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
DOE OSTI2026

High-Performance Near-Infrared Quantum Emission from Color Centers in hBN

Color centers hosted in hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) have emerged as a highly promising platform for single-photon emission and spin-photon technologies relevant to quantum communication and quantum networking. As a wide bandgap van der Waals material, hBN can host optically active quantum defects across a broad spectral range. Here, we demonstrate a simple and scalable oxygen-plasma process that reproducibly creates single quantum emitters in hBN with blinking-free zero-phonon lines (ZPLs) spanning near-infrared (NIR) from 700 up to 971 nm. These emitters combine MHz-level brightness, single-photon purity up to 99.9%, and ultranarrow cryogenic line widths down to 2.7 GHz under quasi-resonant excitation, placing them in a particularly attractive regime for quantum photonics. Photostability measurements further reveal resistance to photobleaching, subnanometer spectral stability over long time scales, and near-shot-noise-limited intensity fluctuations. Analysis of the phonon sidebands shows weak vibronic coupling and ZPL-dominated emission, with Debye–Waller factors approaching 50%. Control experiments together with elemental mapping support oxygen incorporation as a necessary ingredient in activating the NIR emitter population, while first-principles calculations identify O N V N and O N V N H as the leading defect candidates. These results establish a high-performance NIR quantum-emitter platform in hBN for free-space quantum networking and future integrated quantum-photonic architectures.

2D materials↗
DOE OSTI2025

Neutrinoless double beta decay sensitivity of the XLZD rare event observatory

The XLZD collaboration is developing a two-phase xenon time projection chamber with an active mass of 60–80 t capable of probing the remaining weakly interacting massive particle-nucleon interaction parameter space down to the so-called neutrino fog. In this work we show that, based on the performance of currently operating detectors using the same technology and a realistic reduction of radioactivity in detector materials, such an experiment will also be able to competitively search for neutrinoless double beta decay in 136 Xe using a natural-abundance xenon target. XLZD can reach a 3σ discovery potential half-life of 5.7 × 10 27 years (and a 90% CL exclusion of 1.3 × 10 28 years) with 10 years of data taking, corresponding to a Majorana mass range of 7.3–31.3 meV (4.8–20.5 meV). XLZD will thus exclude the inverted neutrino mass ordering parameter space and will start to probe the normal ordering region for most of the nuclear matrix elements commonly considered by the community.

2-phase xenon TPCs↗
DOE OSTI2025

Gravitational waves from supercooled phase transitions in conformal Majoron models of neutrino mass

We study supercooled first-order phase transitions above the QCD scale in a wide class of conformal Majoron-like U(1)′ models that explain the totality of active neutrino oscillation data and produce a detectable stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) at LIGO, LISA and ET. We place constraints on the U(1)′ breaking scale and gauge coupling using current LIGO-Virgo-Kagra data. We find that strong supercooling can be ruled out in large regions of parameter space if a SGWB is not detected by these experiments. A null signal at LIGO and ET will disfavor a type-I seesaw scale above 10 14 GeV, while a positive signal is a signature of heavy right-handed neutrinos. On the other hand, LISA will be sensitive to seesaw scales as low as a TeV, and could detect a SGWB even if the right-handed neutrinos are decoupled.

early universe particle physics↗